As a child, I grew with a poster and a slogan that was ubiquitous everywhere. The slogan read “Hum do, Hamaare do”. The picture was of two children – one small boy and another small girl with the caption “Do ya teen bus”. Loosely translated as “Two or three – no more”. The slogan was […]
The Elusive Demographic Dividend Read More »
In my more lucid moments ( which are now becoming few and far between) I seriously wonder why Himachal has a department of Environment or a Science and Technology Council at all. Neither shows the least interest in either protecting the environment or in exposing the scientific fallacies in the hare-brained schemes regularly manufactured by
MANDI AIRPORT IS HIMACHAL’S OWN CENTRAL VISTA DISASTER Read More »
The last seven days have been a bit of a mixed week for me, somewhat like what the Delhi voter got in 2020 when he voted for Kejriwal : neither fish nor fowl but a chameleon. And for once this dog’s breakfast has nothing to do with our presiding trinity- the alliterative ascetic, the corpulent
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT. Read More »
The other day when I was at the Chemist, a retired Air India employee came in with a prescription from an Air India dispensary. He looked morose. News had come in during the day that the company was finally being handed over to the Tatas to run by the government. The chronically loss-making company is
Echoes of a Generation Read More »
I don’t know about you folks, but I found the obiter dicta by a two judge bench of the Supreme Court last week very disturbing. Hearing a petition by a farmers’ organisation ( not connected to the protests) for permission to congregate at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, the bench asked the question: Do the farmers
IS THE JUDICIARY’S ARAB SPRING OVER ? Read More »
Circe is the mythical Greek goddess- sorceress who ruled the island of Aeaea; any shipwrecked mariner who landed on its shores was turned into an animal- wolf, lion, swine- a fate which also befell the Greek hero Odysseus. In 1965 Nirad C Chaudhri, the last of the breed of Anglophiles, wrote a book of essays
WHEN DID WE BECOME SUCH A BRUTAL COUNTRY ? Read More »
O. Henry’s famous short story “The Cop and the Anthem” features Soapy, a homeless man who spends his New York winter in a low security prison by committing a petty crime, getting arrested and being sentenced for 3 months of the peak winter. His bed and board and heating were taken care of and, since
I’ve just discovered that my passport has expired, but after much deliberation I’ve decided not to renew it. I already have more ” citizenship” documents than I can handle in my advancing years- Aadhar card, EPIC, Domicile certificate, Driving licence, CGHS card, I.D. card, CSOI card, PAN card, Pension Life Certificate- and most of them
THE PASSPORT DILEMMA Read More »
To be inspired is to be filled and led by something beyond the self. It is to let something higher, something from beyond, into oneself to be continually guided, enabled and shaped by it. We can exist by ourselves, but we cannot be fully and vitally alive by ourselves. No man, as an English poet
Swami Agnivesh: An Inspired Life Read More »
